I rarely write reviews of zillion dollar blockbusters because there is little to say that hasn’t already been said, and even fewer people who haven’t already heard it. In contrast, I exploit opportunities to highlight B-pictures of which you may not have heard, but which are very much worth seeking out (e.g., see my reviews of My Name is Julia Ross, Cash on Demand, Tarantula, Plunder Road, and The Narrow Margin). An excellent example is a low-budget 1958 film noir that was shot in just 7 days: Murder by Contract.
The story opens with a handsome, self-possessed, and intelligent man approaching a mobster and blandly asking to be hired as an assassin. Claude (Vince Edwards) has a stable job with a pension, but, he explains matter-of-factly, wants to buy a $28,000 house by the river and doesn’t want to wait 30 years to get there. After being made to wait two weeks for a call in his apartment as a test, he is hired and begins professionally and coldly carrying out contracts, recording his earnings and his progress towards homeownership in a notebook Eventually he is hired for a bigger, higher-risk contract to execute a prosecution witness who is under police protection. Flanked by two mafia minders (Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine), he lays his plans carefully, but fate and his own psychological quirks start to work against him.
You will note that isn’t a particularly complex plot, but the story is only half of what this movie offers. The other half is a character study of a philosophical loner who is at times utterly ruthless and at others considerate beyond measure. That he can turn on a dime makes Claude both beguiling and frightening. Edwards’ movie career never really went anywhere (though he later became a television star as Dr. Ben Casey) but it’s a credit to his acting and Irving Lerner’s direction that the audience can have some sympathy for him despite his psychopathic predilections.
The spare style and look of this film feel more akin to the cinema of France and Italy than the U.S.. That reflects the craft of Lerner and also cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who had no choice but to shoot on simple sets and in natural locations with no adornment. Perry Botkin’s simultaneously cool yet suspenseful score is also essential to the mood.
The script, by Ben Simcoe and an uncredited Ben Maddow, paints Claude as having the single-mindedness and female-focused psychological hang-ups of Travis Bickel from Taxi Driver, but with much better clothes and manners. I was therefore not surprised to learn that the legendary Martin Scorsese saw Murder by Contract as the second feature when he went to the theater as a 14-year old. The movie had a major impact on him, and he later hired Lerner to help make New York, New York.
I believe this suspenseful, fascinating B-movie treasure is now in the public domain, so I put it here for you to enjoy.
p.s. Herschel Bernardi, who is so good here in a half-comic, half-dtamatic role, was a stalwart on another one of my recommendations: the Peter Gunn television series.
All Good Movies 